Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

Nick.6972:

The team of the best selling MMO in the history can’t produce a single permanent zone in 11 months.
And with that, I leave this thread.

First of all, they have never claimed best selling. They have said fastest selling.

How convenient that you choose to ignore certain stuff actually added.
EDIT: And apparently you edited your post.

No matter if it were done before release, even if a zone is not permanent it requires work. Or do you think that a temporary zone simply builds itself?

Man Krall, take a break from debating all these peeps, everyone has different points, half to most are all wrong.

It’s Friday, time to get on the game and relax. Let’s put the swords away and celebrate Anets 3mil+ copies

:)

Nick.6972:

If you have the money, you can hire more people, and if you have more people, you can produce content faster, not to mention less buggy and full of glitches.

Best selling MMO in history can’t make LFG system for more than 11 months, I call that a BS.

Honest question here…

When did WoW introduce their LFG system ?

Oh, and Fastest selling does not mean best selling.

Guild Wars 2 goes on the same list of misinformation and misrepresentation in false advertising the same way that Diablo III duped its fan based.

“We took everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and brought it to Guild Wars 2”

LOL

And that is why your PvP is more dead in a 1 year old game than a game that is 8 years old.

Motoko.2875:

Guild Wars 2 goes on the same list of misinformation and misrepresentation in false advertising the same way that Diablo III duped its fan based.

“We took everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and brought it to Guild Wars 2”

LOL

And that is why your PvP is more dead in a 1 year old game than a game that is 8 years old.

^ Agree 100%. I don’t think this game has a single “Guild Wars 1” aspect in it except for horizontal progression. I played GW1, and it was a fantastic game and I played it for about 6 years. I can’t stick with GW2 for even a year.

nethykins.7986:

Jrunyon.3012:

Galtrix.7369:

But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

You are absolutely ridiculous Galtrix. Seriously, why are you here? Just tell me, are you like 10 years old or something? Why do you come here and kitten and moan that you don’t like this game all the time. Just stop.

You are so blinded by negativity that you come up with these false statements to try and make yourself believe that this game is dying when in truth it really isn’t. It simply isn’t. I see more people on now than I did months ago.

Stop coming here and surrounding yourself with negativity. It’s really not healthy. And that goes for Nuka Cola as well.

Technically, his point is correct. In PR terms anyway.

You don’t disclose anything that will make your product seem inferior or not a big hit (considering there was a ton of hype for GW2…and there still kinda is). Often, when you hear of great successes, you get an elaborate number, often those numbers are backed up over a period of time, through earnings calls, through analytical data-gathering and collection companies.

Before you begin to lose your temper on someone in a forum, check if you can find official numbers besides Collin’s 3m statement. Check if you can find any data that shows sales of GW2 outside of microtransactions. Check if you can even access the data from the source and you’ll find it’s hidden behind a ~$3.5k paywall

lordkrall.7241:

Actually I don’t think ANY MMO gives actual numbers of players. So I suppose every single MMO every released is embarrassed then?

And funnily enough they HAVE given numbers. Just a few weeks back they stated a number of 2,5 million active accounts each week.

While I agree that sometimes you don’t get numbers from all MMO’s. But hey, if you flaunt it, you better be able to prove it…right?

And again, a member of ANet coming out and saying x numbers are active could be a number pulled from the air of PR. I could say my youtube account has x number of hits per day…but if my stats are hidden/private on my youtube page, you’d be a little skeptical, wouldn’t you?

Thanks for coming to my defense. I appreciate it. I was going to go into more detail, but I was in a hurry and only had time to post a crude message that I could only give the basics about.

Galtrix.7369:

Thanks for coming to my defense. I appreciate it. I was going to go into more detail, but I was in a hurry and only had time to post a crude message that I could only give the basics about.

I just felt compelled to tell someone (who obviously didn’t look at any data and did not want to) you can’t really say “He said 3m, so it’s fact” if there’s no data available to confirm that. Otherwise it’s amounting to as much use for fact-checking as hear-say.

I had a little time on my hands today. When I heard the news, it sounded odd, so I actually went through the earnings call briefly for Q4, when they’d first announced they’d got 3m sales. Yet, I couldn’t find that information in there (sales for GW2 was lumped up and only accounted to 130k so I’m figuring that was perhaps more likely gemstore stuff??? i dunno) and all other sources lead back to Colin’s quote. I checked the company that even did the data collection, but you can’t see any data unless you pay $3500, and all other sources like VGcharts are also unreliable…so ya know…some people just don’t want to question stuff

Peetee.9406:

Any MMO can be the fastest selling MMO when you pick a random arbitrary point like 9 months.

SWTOR sold 2 million copies in its 1st month and WoW has sold over 100 million copies in 7 years.

What an awful statistic!

SWTOR didn’t sell any copies though. They went F2P quickly after launch and screwed over lot of subscribers. They were never a B2P model either, and I doubt they had over 2 million subscribers in the first month. That’s almost as many as WoW has now. ;3

Nuka Cola.8520:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Nuka Cola.8520:

All this money made and we got nothing in return but more gem store items, awesome.

Yeah.

Except for all the content they’ve released since launch. But wait, you didn’t personally like any of that content so it doesn’t count as content, right?

What content? Where are they at? Oh wait, i know, deleted because they were temporary.

I saw the play Phantom of the Opera. It’s not there anymore. I can’t see it again. Does that mean I didn’t see a play?

Temporary content IS content.

Vayne.8563:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Nuka Cola.8520:

All this money made and we got nothing in return but more gem store items, awesome.

Yeah.

Except for all the content they’ve released since launch. But wait, you didn’t personally like any of that content so it doesn’t count as content, right?

What content? Where are they at? Oh wait, i know, deleted because they were temporary.

I saw the play Phantom of the Opera. It’s not there anymore. I can’t see it again. Does that mean I didn’t see a play?

Temporary content IS content.

The words of Vayne speak the truth once again.

Its funny how mad ppl can get at facts (reading the most from mmorpg.com) I guess if you sound angrily enofe the truth no longer becomes the truth? That or if they cant go after the facts they go after the ppl saying them i just do not get it meh humans are very odd i must say.

It will sell very well in China too, this game has a massive ‘Flash in the Pan’ factor from 1-80. Retention is the factor though and I think it all goes back to something I read early on in GW2’s development, “GW2 is the MMO for people that hate MMOs”…

That’s like saying that you have created the greatest luxury sedan for drag racers. All my favorite game sites and critics loved GW2 when it was in beta and first came out but then interest just waned completely. But, my biggest proof is my own GF. This is a woman that I had to literally horsewhip off of the likes of AO, EvE, FFXI, WoW, Aion and WAR or she would spend all her waking hours on them. In GW2 though, 1-80 and even though I still enjoy aspects of this game a lot, I can’t get her to play with me at all anymore =(

Either way, grats Anet hope you do very well in China too.

“ArenaNet has partnered with a market research firm…”

Well, this line should tell you everything about the objectivity of that “research”.

Astral Projections.7320:

Interesting but won’t stop the QQers as they will just say the game sold 3 million then promptly fell over and died.

Well, the three million units number was first mentioned 3 months after the launch. If half a year later (the article mentions 9 months) they still mention the same number, then there’s some truth to such claim.

Galtrix.7369:

Astral Projections.7320:

Interesting but won’t stop the QQers as they will just say the game sold 3 million then promptly fell over and died.

What we could REALLY use when arguing with negative Nancys discussing this is the total number of sales and also some hard numbers on concurrency.

Unfortunately, the QQers are right on this game. It did fall over and die and then an Anet employ came, hit it with a sledge-hammer and then kicked it off the empire state building.

Sure, if Anet gave us accurate numbers on the exact amount of people playing at the moment, the number of people per server, and the people quitting daily, then I’d be happy. But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

What would the numbers do for you.. every server has something called concurrency.. yours might be lower concurrent logins than others sometimes and sometimes it might be overflowing… do you even understand what numbers are you seek and what they tell you… I am guessing not. Box sales mean nothing per say except to ANET when looking at how fast they can recover theirs and their backers initial outlay… once they hit that the rest is gravy. and the more gravy they can pour over the game the more development going forward there will be…. but then again what difference does it make if 3million people have bought, tried left as long as you are enjoying the game…
But I guess your not and that’s ok, no one is forcing you too. But where do you get all the evidence to suggest the game is dead.
Take a look at SWTOR to learn that lesson.. record box sales right off the bat – but look where they were 9-12 months later, quarterly statements painted in spin, few actual updates, firefighting , server crunching under a cloud of spin, poor content repeatability, then finally F2P in under a year…. number of box sales tell you nowt! so better to not report such things too often as there will always be someone claiming the game is dead, the game is rubbish etc, etc because of numbers.

I too don’t like certain things about the game, its not perfect in my eyes but its certainly not dead imo and there must be money being made for them to keep putting in new updates every 2 weeks, adding changes, continuing to try to polish aspects of the game… anyone who has played MMO’s long enough knows that when a game is hitting rock bottom the first thing that gets stifled is development of content, quickly followed by maintenance mode only…. not something I see happening in GW2 as yet…. but who knows what’s round the corner – then again there are plenty of other options out there to occupy your time if GW2 isn’t for you.

Dafomen.7892:

“ArenaNet has partnered with a market research firm…”

Well, this line should tell you everything about the objectivity of that “research”.

Partner with me Anet, I’ll do it for a dollar and fix your game with one email. I’ll even do the numbers, but don’t expect 600% higher salaries for the worthless CEOs, ‘Publishers’ and such, that goes to the developers, the heart of any game.

The current ‘business model’ from 2000 and on is rubbish, especially when you apply it to games. Games are a hobby for players, about substance and depth. The same commitment needs to be applied by the developer, or the game is just a wannabe that was supposed to be a fun hobby but is 100% about profit only. You don’t get gems from that kind of thinking, you get crap.

Famously, Blizzard was amazed at the success of WoW. The MMO market went from a peak of 500K to 5M overnight and up from there! They deserved it, it was a great game, no doubt but did they reward their devs hard work? I don’t think they did, or many ANet and Carbine devs would still be there and WoW wouldn’t suck balls now.

Now it’s all kind of fractured, the devs try to (and not to, here, disastrously imo) ape eachother at every turn. Everything is just getting more and more lame and homogenized with MMOs. A once great genre is being reduced to hypercasual only status, just for short term profits, for the guys that didn’t do kitten!

Now I’ll get deleted/B&/ignored or get hit with the lame, “You don’t know kitten about business, go take a class you kitten!” and I don’t give a kitten. The class part I do understand, that’s where people get brainwashed to this garbage so no, I’ll pass. I will retort with, why do you buy this line of nonsense? It’s common sense, in the most common terms.

Everyone and I do mean everyone from top to bottom, needs to get over themselves and see the larger picture. We are getting bled dry of all talent, progress and innovation in the name of profits; for a handful of people that just control kitten eating money and offer nothing to the real process. Humanity did not evolve in this nature, greed brought us here and it’s not looking good for any of us in the very near future.

/rant

Galtrix.7369:

Astral Projections.7320:

Interesting but won’t stop the QQers as they will just say the game sold 3 million then promptly fell over and died.

What we could REALLY use when arguing with negative Nancys discussing this is the total number of sales and also some hard numbers on concurrency.

Unfortunately, the QQers are right on this game. It did fall over and die and then an Anet employ came, hit it with a sledge-hammer and then kicked it off the empire state building.

Sure, if Anet gave us accurate numbers on the exact amount of people playing at the moment, the number of people per server, and the people quitting daily, then I’d be happy. But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

No sensible publisher would ever give you all the numbers. It’s the same reason why companies only release figures in financial reports, and even then it’s often only because the law forces them to.

The numbers themselves don’t hold that much significance, it’s how they become interpreted. A good commentator can put pretty much any number in any light they wish to, and thus of they have the media and shudder the Internet that much data to play around with, no matter how ‘good’ those figures actually are, there will be well-known commentators out there putting them in a bad light and risking Anet a fall on public opinion and sales.

So any data any firm gives you will outside of legal requirements only be given once that firm is sure it won’t have any reasonable chance of causing a negative impact, and Anet is no exception.

@poster above

I’m afraid you’re talking about an utopian society which never existed. Human society was and always will be driven by incentives. MMOs need funding to be made, more funds than other games in fact, and since that funding only comes from firms who wish to maximise profits, of course it’s going to be profit driven. People don’t invest money into things for the hell of it, they need something to come out of the other end.

Also, there’s a good correlation between how good a game is and how much profit it makes. You don’t get people playing and paying for your game by sucking hard, and WoW isn’t the most successful MMO ever made by being terrible.

In terms of why MMOs are becoming so homogenous, it’s because of risk. The amount of money it takes to make a serious MMO (SWtoR, GW2, not those f2p trash you get for a pound a dozen), is astronomical, and competition out ther is huge. Creativity is often a gamble, and losing that gamble leads to huge losses.

Why does every MMO have the holy trinity? Because its tried and tested and it works. Why is the dreaded gear treadmill there? Because it gets people playing.

In the case of this game, GW2 is already being very bold taking both of those away, and that’s something to be celebrated. But as you can see already, a part of that is backfiring on them from everyone screaming how there’s no synergy in the combat system.

nethykins.7986:

And again, a member of ANet coming out and saying x numbers are active could be a number pulled from the air of PR. I could say my youtube account has x number of hits per day…but if my stats are hidden/private on my youtube page, you’d be a little skeptical, wouldn’t you?

actually that would be illegal. They have both investors and funders that they have to keep updating with rightful numbers. There are companies dedicated to counting numbers like box sales and accounts active, and if the information given was false the company is called out on it and taken to court. Not to mention that they lose a bunch of investors.

Also GJ Anet! Mostly happy with your game so far and love those updates every 2 weeks

Xae Isareth.1364:

Galtrix.7369:

Astral Projections.7320:

Interesting but won’t stop the QQers as they will just say the game sold 3 million then promptly fell over and died.

What we could REALLY use when arguing with negative Nancys discussing this is the total number of sales and also some hard numbers on concurrency.

Unfortunately, the QQers are right on this game. It did fall over and die and then an Anet employ came, hit it with a sledge-hammer and then kicked it off the empire state building.

Sure, if Anet gave us accurate numbers on the exact amount of people playing at the moment, the number of people per server, and the people quitting daily, then I’d be happy. But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

No sensible publisher would ever give you all the numbers. It’s the same reason why companies only release figures in financial reports, and even then it’s often only because the law forces them to.

• Consistent players mean very little to investors in a F2P/B2P game, only cash shop and box sales are relevant. Releasing numbers is irrelevant, agreed.

The numbers themselves don’t hold that much significance, it’s how they become interpreted. A good commentator can put pretty much any number in any light they wish to, and thus of they have the media and shudder the Internet that much data to play around with, no matter how ‘good’ those figures actually are, there will be well-known commentators out there putting them in a bad light and risking Anet a fall on public opinion and sales.

• The internet shudder is very good with rounding up data. I even have the entire script for the current run of Breaking Bad, want a spoiler?

So any data any firm gives you will outside of legal requirements only be given once that firm is sure it won’t have any reasonable chance of causing a negative impact, and Anet is no exception.

• MMO players have already passed judgment on GW2, it’s not bad but not super favorable either. FFXIV is going to be a huge hit in consistant GW2 players in the short term, a very similar platform but with trinity/raids. Wildstar is also coming soon, another potential huge hit. That’s the metric that counts.

Sorry for the weird format, not sure how to quote properly here. It seems weird by design sadly. Or maybe I’ve been up for way too long, probably.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Galtrix.7369:

Astral Projections.7320:

Interesting but won’t stop the QQers as they will just say the game sold 3 million then promptly fell over and died.

What we could REALLY use when arguing with negative Nancys discussing this is the total number of sales and also some hard numbers on concurrency.

Unfortunately, the QQers are right on this game. It did fall over and die and then an Anet employ came, hit it with a sledge-hammer and then kicked it off the empire state building.

Sure, if Anet gave us accurate numbers on the exact amount of people playing at the moment, the number of people per server, and the people quitting daily, then I’d be happy. But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

No sensible publisher would ever give you all the numbers. It’s the same reason why companies only release figures in financial reports, and even then it’s often only because the law forces them to.

The numbers themselves don’t hold that much significance, it’s how they become interpreted. A good commentator can put pretty much any number in any light they wish to, and thus of they have the media and shudder the Internet that much data to play around with, no matter how ‘good’ those figures actually are, there will be well-known commentators out there putting them in a bad light and risking Anet a fall on public opinion and sales.

So any data any firm gives you will outside of legal requirements only be given once that firm is sure it won’t have any reasonable chance of causing a negative impact, and Anet is no exception.

@poster above

I’m afraid you’re talking about an utopian society which never existed. Human society was and always will be driven by incentives. MMOs need funding to be made, more funds than other games in fact, and since that funding only comes from firms who wish to maximise profits, of course it’s going to be profit driven. People don’t invest money into things for the hell of it, they need something to come out of the other end.

Also, there’s a good correlation between how good a game is and how much profit it makes. You don’t get people playing and paying for your game by sucking hard, and WoW isn’t the most successful MMO ever made by being terrible.

Blizzard was just Blizzard when they made WoW. No publisher, just ‘parent’ company Vivendi, their first bad move. They came in, offered money and the greedy kittens accepted. Easy mode, money makes money, lovely… Lots of yachts! Now (16 years later) they just paid 8 Billion dollars to be rid of them… Good job. But, they still have Activision on their backs and are resorting to a tablet card game to try to recover.

It’s a kittened system.

Oh and yes, Utopian is exactly the system I am looking for. There is no reason it should only exist for the 1%.

@Primernova the internet is only good at rounding up info when there are info available, that script for Breaking Bad you;ve got is either from someone at the studio who leaked it or from the producers themselves who leaked it on purpose to generate media coverage (like how you see a lot of games ‘leak’ info on future content to websites). With actual important data like financial figures or playerbase info, companies guard that with their lives, not something the internet can round up unless someone in one of those companies really don;t want their jobs and reputation in the industry anymore.

I don’t see FFXIV having much of an influence on GW2 because simply, their target audiences are very different. For a start it uses a, well, FF-based combat system (ie, no dodging etc) and GW2’s combat system is much more dynamic; appeals to different people and trinity/raids is something GW2 on purposely did away with. Of course there’s the MMO-hopping train which floods to every major game release out there but I think that train’s gone past GW2 now.

I can’t say too much about Wildstar as personally I have this skewed view of it being just WoW in space so anything I say about it would be quite biased.

I terms of future games though, I think the only real ‘threat’ to GW2’s player numbers is ESO, as the 2 games have a lot of similarities (dynamic combat, similar plot/lore and artstyle) but there’s quite a few things which I think ESO does better (if their fully costumizable character building delivers what it’s promising, that would be a major improvement upon GW2).

Regarding an utopian society, it isn’t even possible for that 1%. It’s like Communism in the sense that it requires absolutely everyone to put soul and heart into doing everything in a way which is believed to be ‘pure’. Humans have a tenancy to not do that at all and find ways to take advantage of every situation.

And again, I don’t really see why being profit-driven is ‘bad’. I don;t know exactly what happened back then, but if Blizzard didn’t accept the money from Vivendi it’s completely possible that Blizzard wouldn’t be like it is today. Without the funds to do so, even if you have the most amazing ideas in the world, they wouldn’t materialise.

Motoko.2875:

Guild Wars 2 goes on the same list of misinformation and misrepresentation in false advertising the same way that Diablo III duped its fan based.

“We took everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and brought it to Guild Wars 2”

LOL

And that is why your PvP is more dead in a 1 year old game than a game that is 8 years old.

Quote for the win…

Not to mention advertising the sale of apples that changed to oranges after release, conveniently just when preorders exceeded refund time, or “How ANet thought me never to preorder anything and never ever trust a single word they say” (which was backed by the “We listened to our most dedicated players and introduced gear grind to the game… er, no lets not call it gear grind, it’s such a bad word – progression! You there GW1 people waiting for our game for 7 years? Of course you are not our most dedicated playrers”).

A real successful, good game does not need spin doctors to advertise, just saying.

It started off okay (the article blurb) but then just went straight into Hype Land.

First they don’t acknowledge that WOW’s point of exponential growth happened later on when there was a big “Culture shift” in general (along with the fact the entire nation of Korea will buy ANYTHING with the blizzard brand on it).

Second… Growth is slowing in China again and they still have that manipulated depreciated self worth issue to deal with which could totally backfire on any Marketing firm that attempts to launch anything there in the next year as the Fed Easing program dries up.

oh, and 3rd… if there’s any western product they REALLY enjoy, usually they just bootleg their own version of it and sell it back to themselves at a fraction of the price :p

Vayne.8563:

Temporary content IS content.

Only during the period of time in which it is available. After it is gone it is no longer content because the game no longer, “contains,” it.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Temporary content IS content.

Only during the period of time in which it is available. After it is gone it is no longer content because the game no longer, “contains,” it.

Except that it’s not deleted from the game files and will come back as a yearly event or will have part of it come back as a fractal.
It’s also still hundreds of hours of content that you could have experienced at the time. If you’re new to the game then all you need to know is that you’ll have new things to do every 2 weeks.

ilr.9675:

oh, and 3rd… if there’s any western product they REALLY enjoy, usually they just bootleg their own version of it and sell it back to themselves at a fraction of the price :p

So true. But then we kinda realise we’re really bad at making said bootlegged products.

Also fastest diminishing playerbase ever?

I don’t know, dare I say the population has been increasing quite steadily in the last few months?

It certainly has in my server, Seafarer’s Rest. A few hours ago we had an overflow in LA, something I haven’t seen in ages. Considering the current LS takes place in Divinity’s Reach…